What Is The Hardest Second Language To Learn

  Some and Any are two words that often cause confusion, which is why we have decided to take a closer look at the difference of the two words in this video. Firsly, some is a determiner used for positive statements while any is a determiner used in questions and negative statements. Consider the following situation: I asked the teacher if he could give me some paper. I said ‘Excuse me, have you got any paper?’ Unfortunately, he didn’t have any. The first statement is positive and therefore requires us to use some. The second sentence is a question and therefore, we need to use any. The third and final sentence is a negative statement which also requries us to use any. It's worth noting that we do sometimes use some in questions and we also use any in positive statements. For...  [Read more]

  So now we'll consider the actual classroom arrangements themselves in terms of the physical desk layout. There are possibly three main types of arrangements that are used within classrooms and we're going to indicate the desks here as being boxes and the arrangements of the students within those desks will be blue crosses. So here we have the desks ranged in rows and the students sitting within those rows. The second arrangement could be the use of horseshoes or semi circles and finally the use of individual desks. So for each of these arrangements what are the potential advantages and disadvantages of arranging our seating in this way? Let's take the rows first of all. One of the potential advantages is that it does give the teacher the opportunity, if it's arranged correctly,...  [Read more]

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Should Students Be Allowed to Use Their Native Language in the Classroom When I first began teaching lessons during the TESOL Course I found myself almost automatically saying to the students, “English please,” after all it is an English class. However, I began to question myself about whether or not this was “correct” practice or if the students should in fact use their native language to assist them in the learning process. After doing some research I found the TESOL Law Code of Ethics. The Law of Ethics provided many vague and open-ended ideas. It suggested things along the lines of, “The foreign language teacher shall direct her whole professional effort to assist the students to develop his/her second language speaking ability.” It also mentions that TESOL teachers are to...  [Read more]

Songs in the Classroom The use of songs in the ESL classroom can be a fun and innovative way of covering a range of English language topics. Songs can be used for vocabulary, grammar, dictation, pronunciation (stress and intonation), phonetics, speaking, writing, listening, integrative skills, and many other ESL points. Furthermore, songs can invite the non-native speaker into the English speaking culture. For instance, pop music gives the learner a taste of what is trendy at the moment. Meanwhile, the lyrics to classic rock songs can give a sense of history and the attitude of the country at the time of recording (for example, “Give Peace a Chance,” John Lennon, 1969). Additionally, children’s songs are crucially important for the young learner as they are an easy way to encourage...  [Read more]

Pronunciation Problems for Chinese Students of English As a global language, English has been popularly taught as the second language in China for quite a few years. Now there are more Chinese people learning English on various purposes, such as applying for a higher paid job, studying and living abroad, or establishing business with western countries. According to my experience of learning and teaching English, it is harder to master English pronunciation than English grammar for Chinese students. Chinese grammar may appear quite simple compared to that of many highly-inflected Western languages (e.g. Russian, Latin, etc.), or even the low-scale verb conjugations, for instance, of English (e.g. "swim, swam, swum") because of the lack of inflections. Even though there are similarities...  [Read more]